The Legislature is releasing $54 million for the Universities of Wisconsin now that the Board of Regents has fulfilled mandated changes to faculty workloads and students’ general education.
A Republican-led state legislative committee approved new teaching requirements for Universities of Wisconsin faculty Thursday, a condition of the bipartisan state budget passed this summer.
Starting next fall, full-time faculty and instructional academic staff at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee will need to teach at least one course per semester and a minimum of 12 credit hours each school year. Employees at the other 11 state universities face higher requirements.
All credits for general education courses must also be transferable and satisfy general education requirements across the universities by September.
According to data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, organic farming in the state supports more than 2,000 jobs and results in about $424 million in revenue. Wisconsin is home to 1,455 certified organic farms, covering 245,333 acres, second only to California, according to the Wisconsin State Farmer.
“You want a healthy amount of skepticism in a democracy…You don’t want 100 percent believers,” said Dietram Scheufele, a social scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies public perspectives on science and technology. But he warned that skepticism in the US is “on steroids,” pushing people from the middle into polarized political camps and toward conspiratorial thinking.
A panel of University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty called for higher institutions to rebuild public trust during a panel Dec. 3, sharing both hopeful and pessimistic sentiments about the Trump administration’s threat to higher education.
History professor Giuliana Chamedes said the ability of students, faculty and staff to speak up has been “central” to restoring democracy and academic freedom. She referenced similarities between the Trump administration’s policies and historical attacks on higher education from fascist regimes, highlighting higher education’s historical ability to overcome persecution.
Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) is proposing increased law enforcement presence, adjustments to fencing layout and stricter attendance policies this spring to Lily’s Classic, their annual hockey tournament and fundraiser, amid safety concerns. The changes currently await university approval.
Dugan’s lawyers likely signed onto the case to send a message, says John Gross, director of the Public Defender Project at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “[Her lawyers are] really just the who’s who of criminal defense, federal litigators in Wisconsin,” he says.
Each November and December, two swan species pass through Madison during their fall migration from the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic to Chesapeake Bay and the mid-Atlantic Coast. The length of their stay on Lake Mendota and Lake Monona depends on weather conditions and can range from days to weeks, according to Stanley Temple, the Beers-Bascom Professor Emeritus in Conservation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Yes, it’s the first time a three-judge panel for a redistricting action has happened in Wisconsin state court. But a three-judge panel for redistricting challenges or Voting Rights Act challenges are what happens in federal court,” said Bree Grossi Wilde, the executive director of the nonpartisan State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “This is how redistricting battles played out in federal court.”
Wright, who was born in Richland Center in 1867 and briefly studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is famous for his pioneering work as an architect.
Quan Barry is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of many books, including “When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East” (featured on Big Books and Bold Ideas in 2022) and “We Ride Upon Sticks.” Her new novel is “The Unveiling.”
Imposing the tax is “only logical,” said Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“They used to control the population, but now they are encouraging people to have more babies; it is a return to normal methods to make these products ordinary commodities,” Yi said.
For working-class parents, however, allowances are more likely to serve an actual budgetary purpose. Parents may say, “Here, you get $5 a week,” J. Michael Collins, a professor of personal finance at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me, because that is all they can afford to give their kid to spend for fun. But that type of budgeting offers kids a valuable lesson.
University of Wisconsin-Madison education law professor Suzanne Eckes said that, ultimately, schools are responsible for maintaining a safe environment for their students.
When she’s teaching the basics of education law and liability, she often uses scenarios from physical education classes.
Just because there’s a student injury doesn’t mean that a school district is negligent, Eckes said. First, an injury has to occur in a situation where a teacher has a duty to supervise. Then, the teacher or instructor would have to breach that duty by, for example, “leaving a pool unattended while students were swimming, playing on their phone during class, talking with teacher friends instead of supervising the playground during recess,” she said.
